On October 5, 2004, a personal exhibition of works by the renowned embroidery master of the region, Lutsk resident Yuriy Emanuilovych Savka, opened at the Volyn Museum of Local Lore; on October 7 of this year he celebrates his 70th birthday. Born in the village of Yabluniv in the Kosiv region (Prykarpattia), Yuriy Savka moved to Lutsk in 1985. By profession a civil engineer (he graduated from the Ivano-Frankivsk Institute of Oil and Gas), in Lutsk he worked in construction organizations until 1994, until his retirement. Yuriy Savka discovered his artistic talent after retiring – under the influence of the works of Father Dr. Dmytro Blazheyovsky (from Rome). However, the master did not stop at copying embroidered icons; he founded the Volyn school of embroidered portraiture. Each of Yu. Savka's works is characterized by subtle psychologism, an artistic sense of the image, an precise color palette, and high technique of execution. The master is a patriot and a citizen, a person who, through his stance and his efforts to convey his thoughts and convictions to others, has chosen his own path of creative search. Among Yuriy Savka's best works are portraits of Olena Pchilka and Lesya Ukrainka, Father Dmytro Blazheyovsky and Vyacheslav Chornovil, architect Leonid Maslov and his own uncle Ivan Savka (shot by Soviet jailers in 1941), Volyn artist Valentyna Mykhalska and Rukh activist Oleksandr Yurchenko, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, and Cossack leader Ivan Bohun. Yuriy Savka – a creative and active nature – is an extraordinary personality. He is now in the prime of his creative powers, full of plans and hopes. The master's participation in numerous exhibitions testifies to his substantial creative output, which on the days of his jubilee has poured forth into a large personal exhibition. At the exhibition "The Embroidered Portrait of Yuriy Savka" there are 36 portraits of Ukrainian devotees and icons of the Kholm and Bialystok Mother of God. The ancient potter's craft echoed to us at the beginning of the 21st century with the exhibition "So That the Potter's Wheel Does Not Stop," opened on October 6, 2004, at the Volyn Museum of Local Lore. The exhibition is dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the birth of the last active potter from the village of Kulchyn in the Kivertsi district, Volodymyr Yukhymovych Kovalchuk. Kulchyn is one of the oldest and most renowned centers of pottery in the territory of the modern Volyn oblast. According to archaeological excavations, clay hand-built pottery was made here as far back as Neolithic times. With the invention of the potter's wheel, wheel-thrown pottery appeared: pots, bowls, makitras, jugs, dviniata, banky, and others. The varieties of purpose and forms of pottery have practically not undergone significant changes since those ancient times. And the potter's tools have remained the same: millstones, a wooden mallet, a metal scraper, a plate-"knife," a "little wheel," a "little wire," and, finally, the potter's wheel. All these tools, as well as numerous pottery products, are exhibited at the exhibition. Kulchyn ceramics are light-colored, sometimes covered with brown or green glaze, modestly decorated with several stripes of ochre or a relief wavy band beneath the rim of the vessel. Pottery clay was extracted in "revni" (as local residents call quarries) in the forest near Kulchyn. Pottery kilns – "hornovytsi" – were located on the high bank of the Styr River. In the 1930s, practically the entire population of the village was engaged in pottery; today, the only pottery kiln has been preserved at Volodymyr Kovalchuk's. The exhibition is complemented by folk genre pictures "The Fair" and "Flowers Behind the Fence," which create the illusion of the natural environment in which the museum visitor finds themselves. The exhibition features over 320 items, of which about 300 are ceramic products from the funds of the Volyn Museum of Local Lore and private collections. A peculiar supplement to the main exhibits are numerous publications by Volyn local historians and journalists: Iraida Maidanets, Tetiana Khomova, Natalia Hatalska, Yevhen Kolodiychuk, Nadiia Humeniuk, Kateryna Zubchuk, and others, as well as photographs of potters' work processes (by Volyn scholar Iryna Artushevska). In the last display case, works by young potters are exhibited, testifying to the continuity and uninterrupted nature of the ancient craft. The exhibition will run during October – November 2004.